英國文學首頁   /   The 19th Century 十九世紀  /  作家  /  John  Keats  約翰.濟慈  /  作品
Ode on a Grecian Urn
作者Author  /  John  Keats  約翰.濟慈

Study Questions

 
 
The poem can be divided into three parts: in the 1st stanza the speaker addresses the urn and then asks it questions; in the 2nd to 4th stanzas, the speaker looks at the urn's designs and then imagine stories, and then in the 5th, the speaker again talks to the urn.

1. The first stanza is difficult because it is filled with metaphors for the urn and then unanswered questions. The poem might interest you more if you glimpse through this part and move right into the middle part (2nd to 4th stanzas).

 
  Stanza 2: one side of the urn shows a piper playing a pipe beneath the trees, and then a bold lover chasing his girl. How is this picture on the urn different from a real life story?

Stanza 3: This difference is what leads to the exclamations in stanza 3. What is the effect of the repetition of the words "happy" and "for ever"? If the speaker praises the "happiness" of the permanent music, love and youth on the urn, why, then, does he switch immediately to "breathing human passion" and its pains?

Stanza 4: From the questions asked here, obviously this side of the urn shows neither the altar (the destination) nor the little town (the starting point)--but the procession on their way to the alter. What is the significance? Also, why does the speaker addresses the little town which is not shown on the urn?

Compare stanza 4 with the previous two. What aspect of the urn do they all show, but treat differently?

  The poem as a whole
2.  With the stories described on the urn in mind, we can then try to understand the metaphors and names for the urn in the 1st and last stanzas. Is there, however, a difference between metaphors in the first stanza ("bride," "child," "historian") and the names in the last ("attic shape," "fair attitude" "cold Pastoral")? If so, why?

3. The last two lines may sound like a cliche and then a repeated praise of the urn.  But can they also be read ironically? (Why does the urn only know, and only need to know, "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty)?   Keep in mind the contrast between the human world and the worlds shown on the urn.

4. The poem is basically an apostrophe to an inanimate object. How does this rhetorical device function in the poem?  Does the poet apostrophize the urn just to praise it?  What does he get to understand?  The urn, and/or human beings' difference from it?

5. Re-consider the development of the poem in terms of the poet's attitudes.   What stance, or attitude, does he take in each stanza?  Can we say that the poet "enter" the urn and then leave it (or going through an empathic process)?

 
 
   


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